All the patience and efforts in developing its mechanical fibre resination system have paid off with outstanding results, says Imal,
headquartered in San Domaso, Modena, Italy. It says that excellent glue savings and no change in surface quality or board properties have been attained with the new system.
To illustrate this, we will take the last two systems Imal installed as examples.
The first is at the Alfa Wood facility in Greece, where the company says reductions in resin consumption of up to 28% have been achieved.
The second and most recent system was put into operation at Fibraplac MDF, Porto Alegre in Brazil. Here Fibraplac runs two continuous Siempelkamp press lines, processing approximately 25 tonne/hr of fibre.
Fibraplac signed the acceptance protocol for the Imal blending system on August 8, 2008, confirming it has managed to reduce resin addition rates by as much as 25%, without affecting the already excellent quality of the board produced.
To be precise, resin consumption dropped to around 70kg of liquid resin per cubic metre of finished board.
Barely a month later, Imal says it received a second order from Fibraplac, for another system on its MDF line 2, confirming its satisfaction with the first.
After visiting the Alfa Wood Greece plant and seeing the Imal system in operation, both Eucatex, Brazil and Kastamonu, Turkey placed orders for the fibre resination system.
Another order has been placed by Homatherm of Germany for its new fibre plant where it plans to mix the fibre
with MDI resin.
Customers with existing conventional blowline resination systems may choose to combine this with Imal’s mechanical system, while new lines can go for 100% mechanical blending.
A full description of the mechanical blending system can be found in WBPI issue 4, 2008, p37. n